Friday’s terrorist attack in Moscow suggests that Russia’s security apparatus is much weaker than the world has been led to believe, says the former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine.
Last week’s terrorist attack at a Moscow concert hall that killed 139 people suggests that Russia’s security apparatus is much weaker than Vladimir Putin has led the world to believe, says former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, John E. Herbst.
„The attack is one more indication that Putin’s control of the country is not nearly as tight as we think,“ Herbst told Fox News Digital in an interview. „This is not what you would expect from a tightly wound dictatorship with a vast security force.“
Herbst argued that Russia’s myopic obsession with the war in Ukraine, now in its third year, has inadvertently weakened Russia’s internal security at the expense of other threats.
„If you assume that, in fact, ISIS carried out this attack, this shows how the overemphasis of Russian security resources on their aggression against Ukraine is making them weaker against true threats to Russian security,“ Herbst said.
Luke Coffey, senior fellow at Hudson Institute, argued it was precisely because of Russia’s war in Ukraine that allowed for Friday’s attack to happen.
„We cannot underestimate the amount of national resources that Russia is having to devote to this large scale war against Ukraine and how this has on other aspects of Russia’s daily life, including its domestic security,“ Coffey told Fox News Digital, pointing to the economy of Russia changing over to a war-time industry.
„Its security services are probably constantly chasing down Ukrainian leads in terms of sabotage groups inside Russia … and dealing with the fighting inside Ukraine itself,“ Coffey said.
